In Guadalajara, Mexico, recently, there was a huge competition among cheerleading groups. One contingent, including 24 young ladies and one young man, displayed a routine representing the drilling of a Nazi military unit. They wore fatigues with arm bands, and carried flags containing the Swastika emblem. One of the girls, it was reported, seemed to give the Heil-Hitler salute to the audience. When this was displayed on YouTube, the competition organizers were surprised by the backlash, and promised to monitor future entrants more carefully. They gave assurances that the routine was innocent, and that there was not much of a Neo-Nazi movement in Mexico. OK, that's all well and good, but what about the Zimmerman Telegram/Letter/Note? Sure, it was a long time ago, but Mexico is an ancient culture, and things move slowly.
During WW I, when Adolf Hitler was but a corporal in the Kaiser's army, Germany was at the point of increasing submarine action in the Atlantic region. At this same time, in the early part of 1917, with America still sitting out the war, President Woodrow Wilson was urging Congress to grant him the authority to arm U.S. merchant ships, in anticipation of just such a move by Germany. Hoping to enhance its position in the American neighborhood, should the U.S. enter the war, Germany sought to entice Mexico as an ally. In furtherance thereof, German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman sent an encrypted telegram to the Mexican government. It stated that, if the United States were to enter the war, Germany would finance Mexico's participation on the side of Germany, as well as to facilitate the return to Mexico of the U.S. states of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The British intercepted the telegram, thereby spoiling the plot.
Out of the U.S. political turmoil of the 1960s, there emerged the Chicano Movement, MECHA (el Movimiento Chicano en Aztlán). Aztlán is the legendary home of the Aztecs. It covers and indefinable swath within Meso America, including former Mexico territory appropriated by the U.S. MECHA fantasized about La Reconqista, the re-conquest of those very territories mentioned in the Zimmerman letter. Were the mystic chords of memory vibrating? Hmmm...
The little corporal had grown up, set the world on fire, and almost burned it down. Could there be, vibrating in the ashes of that great holocaust, visions of the impractical promises of the Zimmerman note – visions transmitted from one great war to the next – and further firing the fantastical utterances of a political movement with the seeming aspirations espoused by the very same Zimmerman letter? Hmmm...
There, within the mysterious realm of Aztlán – channeled down through two great wars -- might those unsuspecting, cavorting cheerleaders in Guadalajara still be transmitting that Teutonic tease of almost 100 years ago? Hmmm...
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Zimmerman once a letter wrote;
Offered to breach the U.S. moat.
Mexicans were stunned:
"Although we're outgunned:
"Already did – without a boat!"
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